PROOF OF GOD! ...and other tragedies.

Current: A Fine Lot of Blather

Sort of tired of talking about me and my old brain. Just laying the foundation for some nice discussions of hollyhocks, rust, and double bloom mutations.

Seriously. I’m planning a break from my wicked self-absorption pretty soon. That is the worst part of self actualization…you really end up thinking about your self an awful, awful lot.

show details 1:54 PM (1 hour ago)

Update on The Quiet Pink Elephant: Having MAJOR issues w/ the 2nd half. Trying to keep going, may have to start over. I will make an elephant! Mark my words.

Well, the children are off to the beach with their father. For three and half more days, the world is my oyster.

They didn’t cry at all when they left. Not one sincere tear. It seemed to take hours of clinging and hugging to get the girl buckled in her father’s minivan, but she didn’t cry.

And so this time does not seem doomed to be spent guiltily scrubbing floors. It has always been hard for me to enjoy time away from the kids after they have heartily expressed that they do not want to be away from me.
But, if they’re happy to go…more power to them…and me. Uh oh, I just started missing them. They’ve only been gone an hour. Crap.

So, I have logged a lot of words into this thing lately…regarding all sorts of well-clad nihilism. The thing is, and I figured this out all at once – sitting in the field near the raspberry canes and trying to explain to a friend how it feels that my family does not value my story, because they don’t acknowledge it or their considerable part in their writing of it. I don’t begrudge them – quite the contrary, they are amazing and gentle people who try very hard to do the right thing and, at all costs, maintain their small sense of status quo. That’s okay; it is their way of being.

(Still haven’t checked the semicolon issue.)(See earlier correspondence with self.)

My way of being is that I cannot take anything involving humans for granted as being immutable…

I can usually carve through most of the layers of any given circumstance and see that, the only objective truth is that the very nature of our society – wherever we live – is detrimental to any true sense (even within families) of consensus –

The vast differences in personality and culture, when cross-referenced with individual experience and perception thereof…well, it is just damn near impossible for two people – much less billions! – to see things in the same way and then to apply consistent valuation to the concept/object/circumstance considered.

And that’s okay. It is what it is. A fundamental human flaw…that our need for a society we can feel connected to at a personal level has spurned the intricate fractals of modern multiculturalism. There are — languages in the world. And yet we try so valiantly to understand one another.

An idiot would use this statement for English-only reform in the schools…which is damaging and inhumanistic — to not honor one’s way of communicating with the world is exceedingly cruel.

Language is just the tip of the iceberg, however. The human brain experiences it’s surroundings and interactions with a richness that is – by our admittedly limited ability to measure – unprecedented in other species. We have no way of knowing the consciousness of giraffes, but we as humans have the capacity to be deeply conscious and we know this in our bones, as children.

Part of learning how to live in this madhouse is the compartmentalization and willfull organization of our active consciousness. We learn how to become less observant – because there is too much to see! – less curious – because there is too much to know! – less creative – because you have to be conscious to make things in a way that is actually satisfying…and consciousness is exactly what we are taught to avoid.

Because to really pay attention, to glean insight from the stories that are everywhere (!)

…well – it is simply overwhelming. It complicates things to no end.

I think the thing that has always tangled my feet has been the awareness that that the world as we know it is an infinite assortment of subjective stories that are, in themselves, fleeting in the minds of their makers. The variables alone are staggering. The only common ground is vital statistics, birth and death. Everything else is pretty much immeasurable.

***************guess I got sidetracked*******************

******

At the very least, Buncombe County is my oyster. I don’t really have any plans. Ditched the fleeting idea of a long random road trip. I used to take such solo-trips fairly often. Driving on long roads has always been a pretty good feeling to me. But, I think I will stay home today.

Just realized the thing that drove me crazy:

Dr. Blazak, Sociologist in Pegged Pants, discussing the qualities of quality research in a field fraught with pointless observation. “The hardest part of sociology is identifying a solution. Seeing the problem is usually pretty easy, measuring the problem can get complicated, but solving the problem…that is the hard part of sociology. Finding a solution.”

I still haven’t figured it out. I’ve been doing qualitative research in humanity for years, trying to figure out why we are so misled…really, paying attention to everything, waiting for the ‘Ah Ha!’ moment that will let me stop thinking about the solution to the problem of sad human pointlessness. Joyful pointlessness is fine, it’s the myth that life is an unfair struggle that really nips at my heels.

I have a headache. Thanks a lot, Prof.

show details May 22 (5 days ago)

I have only hinted at my history here. Some disclosure, but nowhere near the whole truth of what it is like to remember almost everything in clear images, to be able to still feel the rain and see the headlights on the dark I-5 as I stood on the overpass and gave directions to a friend, “The turn off is right there! And then you just go straight!”

(current: this seems completely random, and – yup, sure enough: it is.)

We were going to Vancouver, Washington – to see a band play (I know exactly the band and remember bits of the show vividly, but to tell all of that would be tedious. I don’t only remember the important things in clear movie-style. I remember a bunch of pretty dull stuff, too. Actually, this memory is kind of dull. The parking lot lights later that night and the way the Burgerville milkshake tasted and the exact look on my friend’s face as he told me: “I like that you are so forthright. Almost bossy.”

I tried to smile like I knew what he was talking about.

It can drive a person crazy, for sure. The problem with a brain that remembers so much and that wraps things easily in words is that it requires a lot of organization, compartmentalization. Aaaaaaah! Even thinking about my brain is driving me crazy!

And then I remind myself that I have put my foot down. I will not go any further pretending like I am not just pretty much completely busted. The problem with being wide open – and I am – is that, by the time you are ten years old, you are really starting to feel weary of protecting yourself. I have never really felt wholly at ease in the world – a speech impediment prevented me from saying my own name clearly for the first eight years of my life. And even after that was sorted out, people still looked at me like they didn’t know what I was talking about. And their confused looks were a mirror.

I have always felt safe at home – except for those years when my home was not only my home – roommates and husbands and eggshells everywhere –

I will just do the only things I can do: be a mom (steel myself for mom-related interactions with people), an artist (crochet calms me down and I need to draw a timeline) and a gardener (this extends also to the care of my house proper, it’s all a garden to me.)

I cannot do anything else right now and maybe all this writing about what it is like to have a brain like mine – with a remarkable ability to recall precise sensory experiences in totality: to be able to remember, in some instances – what I was even thinking in the circumstances recalled. But to have a lousy system of organization for the things recalled and to constantly have random shit flying into the Prefrontal Cortex unexpectedly and at all times.

I might be a little off. That’s okay. I am harmless. I’ll just do the things I can do to best possible degree and I will forgive myself the things I can’t do. Which – right now – appears to be much of anything involving leaving the house.

I’ll have to work on that, won’t I?

show details May 22 (5 days ago)

Okay – yeah. I really cannot stress how genuinely okay I am. Showered and dressed and listerined. Floors wiped clean, front porch, if not scrubbed, then swept.

My voice was tight when I called my mom to let her know that tomorrow may make more sense for a work day here, at my house. There is a lot I need to get done if I am going to pull this off. The more time I have to spend looking for this, looking for that – well, the less time I have to spend doing things that matter – like being present with my kids (god – I have been running up the stairs and down the stairs up the stairs and down the stairs…) making sure our habitat is well-maintained and providing opportunities for appropriate enrichment. Ha! We’re like pets!

(I must be totally nuts!)

And getting some of this stuff out of my head or at least using the energy that all these bounding thoughts generate. You’d think writing would be harder…it’s not. Fairly automatic at this point. I hardly ever edit. And then, only lightly: adding letters my thumbs didn’t hit, correcting pronomial slippage, explaining things like pronomial slippage…which just means I say I when I mean you. Which can change the meaning of a statement entirely.

But, I actually feel better than I have in months. Fuck it. I’ll crochet hotpants and sell them to movie stars. I don’t know. Finally I feel brave enough to try to structure my life on my terms…and prioritize! This year has been very informative – and the cumulative effects of living the way I had been living – scrabbling from one exhausted day to another, the seaweed and detritus constantly tangling my feet…well, ultimately I caught outside the reach of the tide…left high and dry to consider.

This past year has been good training. I can write everyday, I can draw everyday, I can make something everyday. I wasn’t sure if I could and now I know that I can and I want very badly to see what will happen if I try…the idea might wear thin in a matter of days…and I may go scrabbling back to work…but, I really don’t know. I’ve been scrabbling for ten frickin’ years! Now seems as good a time as any to: STOP.

Hot Air Balloon!

show details May 25 (2 days ago)

The thing is – and I am not quite going to Firestone yet (see below) – is that I have spent the last 22 years wondering about my own sanity and how it fits in with the concept of sanity as the world defines it. 22 frickin’ years! I know my parents were trying to do the wise thing. They did the only thing they could. Really, there were not appropriate services for a child with my needs – and so those needs went unmet. I think, primarily, all I ever really needed was to feel understood. See posts regarding speech impediment. Crap. I really have to fix the search function on this thing.

Taking a child who feels misunderstood to a psychiatrist’s office, later hospitalizing that same child (yup, me.) — well, it sort of sets one off on a strange path of self-scrutiny. Kinda screws you up. I have been medicated and tested and scanned, but I have never been treated…

If someone wants to help me with all this…not by giving me therapy, but by appreciating that my story is rare and yet relevant. We are all trying to fit in. And even if we don’t leave the house and hardly ever answer the goddam phone…well, we are still defined by our species.

I hope that my kids won’t someday shudder to think that there mom aired her cluttered attic on the internet. I tend to be extremely low-profile and if I have learned anything, it is that my brain does not react well to cognitive dissonance. I have to set the structure of my life and I though I tend toward minimal use of fasteners, the walls I fashion tend to be quite heavy. I don’t want anyone in my business. I just need a place to store all this stuff, people to help me go through it. I don’t want any damn therapy…I just want to exercise my own terms and define my own damn self for a change.

22 years of misdiagnosis and mind-fucks.

Holy shit.

show details May 25 (2 days ago)

I am, I have decided, pretty frickin’ tough after all.

…she was honest and earnest and I left the “brainstorming” – i.e. us sitting in her office and seeming very serious, very poorly-spoken…I think it was my loss for words that finally convinced her that I was really at a crux. That I was truly confused.

I am well-known, too well known, for my ability to be quite charming. Some people call it bullshit, some call it freak, some call it brilliant. Social/contextual flexibility and distinct character, aided by a vocabulary that deserves a remarkable adjective (one that is better than remarkable:) – well, how else do you think a highschool drop-out from S. Georgia has managed to see as much as I have seen, been entrusted with so many lives that are not my own. Seriously. Every job I have ever had has borne the grave weight of mission. As disanthropic as I often feel – a one ring circus! (Perhaps the pink elephant escaped from there! Oh, definitely!)(Holy Crap this is the best idea I have ever had! I need to go crochet. I also need to get the oil changed in the car. I’ll bring my crochet! And what would be otherwise miserable, a stretch of rubbery-scented Firestone hours (really, it’s only quick once it’s your turn!) will be spent crocheting and maybe I’ll even go over to the Innsbruck Mall and hang out! Ha!

They have some of the most remarkable houseplants there!

EVER! I mean, seriously, these things are like trees! Amazingly beautiful and rare, a houseplant of this size.

And they have escalators there! A single very steep and skinny up and down. I used to take the kids to ‘ride’ (yeah, probably should have thought of a different word:) the escalators…holy mackerel. Wasn’t I talking about work?

They really seem to get me there. The museum is the one of the only organizations that has ever truly valued me somewhat accurately. Because I am cunning (it’s true, I am…I try not to be, but it’s in my nature. I am a fox at times.) (I don’t REALLY think I am an actual fox; that would be crazy.

(Note to Self: Remind self of proper capitalization when using semicolons! Semi(hyphen)colons?)

Do you see why it is tough to maintain focus? And I am not even 100% trying to write all this crap. I am actually thinking about ten or twelve different things. Whoaaaa!

Seriously, though – I am fine. I am a woman who has just left her job – on good terms – because she feels as if she hit a bit of a snarl. And about 3 or 4 HUGE realizations hit at once – we are not talking little things like – oh my gosh! The roof is leaking! (Which is tiny – miniscule even – in comparison to the shit I have REALIZED (in both the passive and active sense, both affect and effect) –

We are talking about dramatic re-writes of mythic proportion!

(And I will never say a precise word about the truths I have figured this Winter and Spring. Because the details are mine alone.)

What I write here is the tip of the iceberg, people. There is plenty I am quite content to keep to myself. I have in the past week, alluded – in mighty fine small print – to some ill-treatment of me by people who claimed loyalty by legally binding documents. I also referenced/acknowledged my parents having loved people other than one and other (another.) prior to loving eachother.

I am glad that my parents didn’t marry those other people!

I wouldn’t exist if they had. And there is NOBODY ON THIS PLANET who is exactly like me.

(Ouch.)(Yay?)(Sob.)(Nope.)(

Sigh.)(…yes.)

Okay – going to Firestone now. Oh yeah, except I had this great idea. See, my life has been – um, sort of unusual…not really unusual, but pretty unusual. I had my first encounter with the psychiatric machine when I was twelve. Brunswick, Ga. Very hot and bright in the parking lot. New Jeep Cherokee. Building was light blue-ish. Went with my mom ’cause I was always pissed and reactive, violent even. But only toward myself and walls.

(Holy Shit! I was terrible! What the fuck?)

I was there for a psychiatric evaluation – I’d love to have those records! All my records, actually. Everything that ever had my name on it should be mine. Note to Self: contact psychiatrist lady regarding 2009 psych-eval. Bogus business, all of it. Divorce – related.

Interestingly, however, it seems my Intelligence Quotient – my problem solving capability and my depth of comprehension of the meaning of symbols…really, that’s all that shit measures. Anyway, it’s interesting to me that my IQ has decreased by four points. This may be the result of me futzing up one of the ‘tests’ – or whatever? – because I was not listening to the directions, but already figuring out, by glances, how to solve it…I found the quickest way, but it wasn’t the way specified in the instructions the psychiatrist lady spoke to me. So, she had to throw out that section – so maybe that’s where the four points went. I don’t know. All I know is that when I was 12, I had an IQ of 151. Now it’s 147. There is a discrepancy – a 20 or so point spread between my Verbal IQ and my Spatial/Perceptual IQ. Verbal wins out all the time.

In case you hadn’t noticed:)

I don’t think I’m smart and I think MENSA is for suckers – but, maybe that’s cause I am, myself, a few points shy of the qualifying genius. Sour grapes:)

(I don’t need your stupid nerd club!)(Oh man, I crack myself up.)

Crap, wasn’t I going to the Firestone?

What I was saying is that I am pretty gosh darn interesting. Not by intention, but just cause I am trying to survive however I can, find allies in places true, seek the good in the bad. I don’t try too hard. The writing helps. It’s a solid entertainment source. It’s fun going through conceptual files. Of course, the stuff is almost unbearably disorganized.

Oh well. I am nervous about sending this. Even though I am only sending it to myself. To do so would mean that I am done with dumbing myself down or putting on a smarty hat that doesn’t fit me well at all…I am who I am. I try to be good. I didn’t ask for any of this. I wish I was avowedly bland and steadfast. But, I’m not. I think I’ll draw a fox today.

My parents saw a fox out at Fairview. Rare.

All of this is quite rare. I know enough about the world to know that.

Then again, everybody’s story is ‘special’ in it’s own way.

We all have our own rarities.

Would a ‘not okay’ person take a picture of a rainbow? Nope. Not a chance. So, there. This was in Fairview, I saw the place where the light began/ended, right in the middle of a field. Sort of neat, but only light, after all.